"Ow!" Sideswipe yelped in surprise, then pouted. "Ratchet, you did that on purpose."

Sunstreaker snorted in disdain as he leaned back against one of the med tables opposite his twin brother, watching Ratchet perform a follow-up repair job.

"Stop being a big baby Swipe," he commented, crossing his arms over his glossy yellow chestplate.

"Yeah? Well you try being here with someone poking around near your pain receptors," Sideswipe shot back.

"I have," Sunstreaker replied. "And I made a slagging lot less noise than you."

"Only because you were too doped up on sedatives," the red twin retorted. "Ow! Ratchet! That hurt."

"Good," Ratchet snapped. "So unless you want me to flick my fingers in that direction again, shut up and let me concentrate on what I'm doing. And you," he pointed an energon-stained finger at Sunstreaker. "Either you be quiet, or I throw you out."

Sunstreaker scowled, but knew better than to say anything to the medic. Even he wasn't that brave. Instead, he watched in relative silence as Ratchet continued to work on his brother while for his part, Sideswipe contented himself to simply grimacing or wincing if there was a sudden flash of pain.

The red mech had been wounded in another battle with the Decepticons a couple of days ago, resulting in a damaged equilibrium center. It had been bad enough that he couldn't walk without Sunstreaker's help. Ratchet had fixed the worst of the damage, but said it was best if his circuits repaired themselves, with him giving them a little boost now and then to speed up the process, and fixing whatever his auto-repair systems may have overlooked. Which is what he was doing now.

He was grateful that Sideswipe had a strong warrior's body, in that his auto-repair mechanism worked relatively faster in comparison to a lot of the other Autobots – with the exception of his brother – and had already restored most of his balance in relation to sitting, standing and walking. Running around still meant tripping over his own feet, falling down, and colliding into stuff; and fighting was definitely out of the question at this point in time.

Sunstreaker had just un-spaced one of his soft cloths to buff up a dulled section of his shoulder armor, and Sideswipe was about to make fun of him for it, when they heard a small commotion outside the med-bay. Ratchet looked up with a scowl.

Long ago he'd had the public address system in the med-bay deactivated, as the last thing he needed were the alarms going off inside when he was in the middle of a delicate operation, or when he had patients who were supposed to be resting. If anyone wanted to alert him to anything, he said they could slagging well come down personally and let him know. Much to Red Alert's displeasure Prime had allowed it.

"This had better be good," he muttered.

"Maybe one of the Dinobots stepped on a Minibot again," Sideswipe said, eliciting a snort out of Sunstreaker.

"Don't even make jokes like that Sideswipe," Ratchet groused. " 'Cause Primus knows you're not the one who has to do the repairs later."

"No, that's what you're there for," the red twin replied with an angelic smile.

Ratchet was just pondering whether or not to cuff the cheeky Lamborghini over the head when the med-bay doors slid open, and Prime and Prowl walked in. One look at their faces and they knew the news was not going to be good.

"How are they doing Ratchet?" Prime asked.

"Well, big yellow here's just fine, but Sideswipe's not gonna be able to do any fighting for another two days or so," Ratchet replied, then looked warily at the Autobot Commander. "I know you two didn't come all the way down here just to ask about our twin terrors out of the goodness of your stone-cold sparks, so what's this really about?"

"We need Sunstreaker," Prowl said.

Sideswipe beat Ratchet to it. "Why?" He tried to sit up, but Ratchet placed a hand on his shoulder and kept him down. "What do you want with Sunny?"

"We just got some feedback from the sky-spy. Megatron's out there with a very large, very nasty-looking cannon," Prime said. "These small skirmishes we've been having were probably distractions to keep us from discovering what he was really doing."

"So you want me to go out there and slag a few 'Cons and basically give them something to shoot at while the rest of you dismantle Megatron's new play-thing?" Sunstreaker asked.

"Something like that, yes," replied Prowl.

"Forget it," Sideswipe said. "Sunny's not going out there without me."

"Relax Swipe, I'll be fine. We've done this a few million times, you know the drill."

"I just don't like the idea of you being out there without me to keep an optic on you."

"Please," Sunstreaker scoffed. "I take more care of you out there than you do of me."

"You wish Sunshine, I'm the one who-."

"Shut the frag up," Ratchet cut him off. "Sideswipe stays here. Sunstreaker can go if he wants, but he'd better be walking back in here on his own two feet or Primus help me, I'll slag all three of you, clear?"

"Yes Ratchet," Prime deadpanned. "Sunstreaker?"

"Yeah, yeah I'm coming." He subspaced his cloth and straightened as Prime and Prowl headed outside.